Side guards on a hospital bed serve the important function of keeping a patient from accidentally falling off the bed. This function assumes increased significance from the fact that this type of mishap represents one of the largest sources of injuries to hospitalized persons.
However, when in an elevated position to prevent accidental egress, the guards interfere with the patient's movement, care by others, and general bed maintenance. Accordingly, modern guards include some mechanisms to allow them to lower out of their guarding position while remaining attached to the bed.
The guards in their lowered position, though, present two problems. First, they offer no inducement to return them to their elevated position where they can again guard the patient.
Second, in most instances, the lowered guard extends beyond the outer perimeter of the mattress and its support. There it inteferes with the facile movement of the bed to different locations.
In an effort to ameliorate the latter problem, T. Nelson, in his U.S. Pat. No. 3,220,024, shows a side-guard structure which extends no further than the outer perimeter of the bed frame. However, the frame itself extends beyond the mattress and thus, would hinder the bed's movement.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,081,463 to R. J. Williams et al. shows a side quard which, upon lowering, swings out and then under the bed where a separate latching mechanism holds it. However, swinging the guard between positions requires a significant clear space on each side of the bed, thus reducing its practicability in a crowded hospital room. Moreover, the structure includes complicated mechanisms to swing the guard and retain it under the bed.
A. J. Higgins' U.S. Pat. No. 3,093,839 and C. B. Hutt's U.S. Pat. No. 3,234,570 indicate the desirability of an intermediate position for the guard somewhat elevated above its lowered location. Both of these patents, though, accomplish this additional configuration through the use of a collapsible side guard. A collapsing structure clearly presents significant dangers to fingers and other appendages.
Beds having one or more electric motors also include a set of controls accessible to the patient to allow him to alter its configuration. These may have a separate, rigid supporting structure or dangle from a cord as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,602,784 to G. M. Euler. The former represents a further barrier to using or attending to the bed while the latter allows the controls to become lost or even a menace to the patient.